Into the Darkness - Marv's Flashback
by mikesjrobinson
Summary: Marv has time to think on Death Row


Urgh! This is it then. My last hurrah. It's dirty as hell in this lousy cell. The john in the corner isn't fit to even take a dump in. There's shit everywhere. Guess they don't clean up for a guy like me. This is what I deserve. To live in shit. And wait to die. They asked me what I wanted for my last meal. I told 'em to stick it. All I want is to see you one last time, Goldie. Wendy came to see me and said I could call her your name. It made me happy for a minute, but I knew it wasn't my Goldie. My goddess. My face was beat up pretty good. I was no oil painting to start with, but I didn't want you seeing me like this, Goldie.

They'd beat me up proper again, saying some shit about I gotta eat. So I told 'em, 'you the big men beating up a chained-up guy. I'll take all of you bastards on. You pigs.'

I ordered a rack of ribs, some prime sausages, and a Tomahawk pork chop. Told 'em I was eating them as I tore into it. They said I was an animal. I told um, 'you made me this way.'

Ah, Goldie. You can't imagine the things I seen.

I stepped off the plane in Vietnam that day a boy. How could they put us through that hell? Most of us was just kids. They lied to us. We weren't fighting no war. Just dumped in that damn jungle and left to die. This wasn't no war for is. It was survival.

I was pretty tough back then. Growing up in the projects we had to be tough. It was my only way out. My buddies was dying. Those Roark bastards was flooding the projects with poison. We was turnin' on each other. The army was safer. Vietnam seemed like kid's play compared to that hell.

But it wasn't.

It was a living hell.

We was just canon fodder.

It made me into the animal you see today.

This scumbag loser.

I musta took 300 of those bastards out in a week. They brought out the worst in me. Awoke the beast in me.

When they captured me, I didn't go down without a fight, Goldie. Not me. I took as many of those little Vietcong bastards as I could. But there was just too many. Even for me.

When they'd beat me up so I couldn't take no more, they put a bag over my head, tied me up and threw me in the back of this truck. I don't know where they took me, Goldie. Days in that truck. Beaten with rifle butts til I was like a piece of steak. I was still calling them bastards, though. Marv doesn't roll over for no one.

I don't remember too much about the next few weeks. They put me in stinking cesspit at night. This place is like a palace compared to that hellhole. That Hanoi pit of hell. By day they did real bad things to me, Goldie. Medieval shit. It don't sound much but they had these 'handcuffs of hell' things. Pure pain. Made your hands turn black. Strung you up and bent you all up with ropes, strapped your neck up and ankles up and pulled you backwards. The shouting. The screams. The screams in our faces of the gooks. The screams of the POWs. I can still hear them, Goldie.

They made us kneel on pencils with our hands up above our heads. If we moved, they'd get _real_ sadistic on us. Tied our ankles to the floor and made us sit on stools in our own piss and shit. The whipping. The leg irons.

Every day.

For five years.

It got so I didn't feel pain no more.

They pulled my eyes wide open and shone a light in it for days on end. I seen things I didn't wanna see.

Me an' this guy, Jeremiah he was called, we broke out. I saw my chance. Took every last one of 'em down. They took their eye off Marv. Stupid. We rained merry hell on those bastards. I didn't feel the bullets. We tortured um real good though, Goldie. We were like animals. It felt _good_.

We crawled through miles of jungle, for days, and they seen us. A helicopter. Back to America.

I don't remember the years after. I remember a small room. White coats.

Then one day they just threw me out into the Old town with no clothes.

The boy that stepped off that plane in Vietnam is gone.

I've not been the same since.

Just waiting to die.

Tomorrow I get my wish.

I love you, Goldie


End file.
